One of the biggest problems facing our work is how to adapt to this proliferation of new devices. You&amp;#x2019;re going to see a lot of great presentations from people talking about how to deal with mobile: Ethan talking about responsive design next, Luke and Josh Clark tomorrow. I&amp;#x2019;m going to look at this from a content perspective, talk about what we need to do to get our content onto all these different devices.\n\n\n

I do a lot of work with publishers: magazines like The Atlantic, Fast Company, and The Week, and newspapers like the New York Times. I think the challenges that publishers face have a lot of relevance to every business that is struggling to create, manage, and gain business value from their content. Publishers are like the canary in the coal mine: they feel the pain more immediately, and they have to respond more quickly to advances in digital publishing.\n\n

Ethan frames the problem that we can&amp;#x2019;t expect to support different designs and different codebases for every single platform and device.\n

So if designers and developers are telling us that we can&amp;#x2019;t afford to develop multiple &amp;#x201C;device optimized&amp;#x201D; interfaces, content people are saying the same thing: we can&amp;#x2019;t afford to create content for a single platform. \n\nAs Nic Newman says here, the solution on the content side is to put more structure into your content objects so that they can be more effectively reused.\n\n[twitter]The Nimble report by @rlovinger of @razorfish is a prescient look at why publishers need more structured content. http://nimble.razorfish.com[/twitter]\n

NPR is America&amp;#x2019;s National Public Radio\n\nConde Nast is the large magazine publisher of titles like Vogue, the New Yorker, and Lucky. \n\nConde has invested heavily in developing custom apps for the iPad for some of their flagship titles like\n

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They are not just repurposing their content! They are repurposing the art direction!\n\nWhen the iPad first launched, I was talking about it with the great Paul Ford, formerly of Harpers, and he said: we&amp;#x2019;re about to usher in a golden age of PDFs on the iPad.\n

And maybe Conde Nast would be better of if that&amp;#x2019;s what they did. Instead, they&amp;#x2019;re investing in even more art direction, using their print staffers to create two custom layouts each month, one for portrait and one for landscape. \n\n[twitter]Why aren&amp;#x2019;t you reading @ftrain? If you like the internet, you&amp;#x2019;ll like this: http://www.ftrain.com/wwic.html[/twitter]\n

To me, this looks like an organization desperately clinging to what it knows best: believing that the art direction, the layout, the design, the production values are what will make them successful in digital. Or, as one commenter said,\n\n[twitter]More about Conde Nast&apos;s iPad strategy from the New York Observer: http://www.observer.com/2011/07/scott-dadich-ipad-conde-nast/[/twitter]\n

It&amp;#x2019;s like they are hearkening back to a time in the 1980s when print advertising rates were at an all time high, everyone had limos pick them up to take them to work, mid-afternoon a guy with would come through the aisle, pushing a cart loaded with cocaine.\n\nThe 80s are gone, and custom art-directed apps aren&amp;#x2019;t going to bring them back.\n

So, let&amp;#x2019;s contrast that strategy with how NPR has approached the problem. NPR has invested in something that&amp;#x2019;s not nearly as sexy as what Conde Nast is doing. It&amp;#x2019;s an API which supports something they call &amp;#x201C;COPE&amp;#x201D;: Create Once, Publish Everywhere. It&amp;#x2019;s the exact opposite direction: instead of investing time in custom layouts and art direction, they&amp;#x2019;re investing in true separation of content from form.\n\n[twitter]Fittingly, NPR shares information about its API and publishing strategy openly. For an overview: http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/13/cope-create-once-publish-everywhere/[/twitter]\n

So, let&amp;#x2019;s contrast that strategy with how NPR has approached the problem. NPR has invested in something that&amp;#x2019;s not nearly as sexy as what Conde Nast is doing. It&amp;#x2019;s an API which supports something they call &amp;#x201C;COPE&amp;#x201D;: Create Once, Publish Everywhere. It&amp;#x2019;s the exact opposite direction: instead of investing time in custom layouts and art direction, they&amp;#x2019;re investing in true separation of content from form.\n\n[twitter]Fittingly, NPR shares information about its API and publishing strategy openly. For an overview: http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/13/cope-create-once-publish-everywhere/[/twitter]\n

So, let&amp;#x2019;s contrast that strategy with how NPR has approached the problem. NPR has invested in something that&amp;#x2019;s not nearly as sexy as what Conde Nast is doing. It&amp;#x2019;s an API which supports something they call &amp;#x201C;COPE&amp;#x201D;: Create Once, Publish Everywhere. It&amp;#x2019;s the exact opposite direction: instead of investing time in custom layouts and art direction, they&amp;#x2019;re investing in true separation of content from form.\n\n[twitter]Fittingly, NPR shares information about its API and publishing strategy openly. For an overview: http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/13/cope-create-once-publish-everywhere/[/twitter]\n

What this means is that they can easily take content, whether created in-house or provided by partners, and push it out through their API to an amazing variety of devices and platforms. \n\nSo here you can see the exact same story about Winnie The Pooh, which includes both text and audio, on:\n

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An iPhone app that offers streaming audio from more than 500 public radio stations streams across the United States.\n

WBUR in Boston\n

MPR in Minneapolis\n

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TV browsing (via Xbox, for example)\nThis, perplexingly, also needs to be thought about under the guise of &amp;#x201C;mobile&amp;#x201D;\n

Made possible by a CMS that is set up to guide content creators through developing different sizes and formats for content, and that presumably people like using\n

And an API, which makes it possible to separate content from presentation. \n\nIt means that all the various websites and mobile websites and mobile apps and desktop apps that I just showed you can access this content, and then the designers for each platform make their own decisions about how to visually present it.\n

So, how well have each of these strategies paid off?\n

Compared with print editions that sell hundreds of thousands of copies every month, the Conde Nast iPad apps aren&amp;#x2019;t doing so well. The numbers released for Fall 2010 show consistent declines, and the fact that they haven&amp;#x2019;t released more positive numbers for 2011 suggests things haven&amp;#x2019;t gotten better.\n\nGlamour is often described as the most lucrative title within Cond&amp;#xE9; Nast with 1.85 million subscribers and average newsstand sales of 453,707\n\nPotentially the numbers for the new Apple Newsstand will be better, but we&amp;#x2019;ll have to see.\n\n[twitter]All the numbers about Conde Nast&apos;s iPad issue sales, from Adweek: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/breaking-down-cond-nasts-e-sales-133807[/twitter]\n

Compared with print editions that sell hundreds of thousands of copies every month, the Conde Nast iPad apps aren&amp;#x2019;t doing so well. The numbers released for Fall 2010 show consistent declines, and the fact that they haven&amp;#x2019;t released more positive numbers for 2011 suggests things haven&amp;#x2019;t gotten better.\n\nGlamour is often described as the most lucrative title within Cond&amp;#xE9; Nast with 1.85 million subscribers and average newsstand sales of 453,707\n\nPotentially the numbers for the new Apple Newsstand will be better, but we&amp;#x2019;ll have to see.\n\n[twitter]All the numbers about Conde Nast&apos;s iPad issue sales, from Adweek: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/breaking-down-cond-nasts-e-sales-133807[/twitter]\n

Compared with print editions that sell hundreds of thousands of copies every month, the Conde Nast iPad apps aren&amp;#x2019;t doing so well. The numbers released for Fall 2010 show consistent declines, and the fact that they haven&amp;#x2019;t released more positive numbers for 2011 suggests things haven&amp;#x2019;t gotten better.\n\nGlamour is often described as the most lucrative title within Cond&amp;#xE9; Nast with 1.85 million subscribers and average newsstand sales of 453,707\n\nPotentially the numbers for the new Apple Newsstand will be better, but we&amp;#x2019;ll have to see.\n\n[twitter]All the numbers about Conde Nast&apos;s iPad issue sales, from Adweek: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/breaking-down-cond-nasts-e-sales-133807[/twitter]\n

Compared with print editions that sell hundreds of thousands of copies every month, the Conde Nast iPad apps aren&amp;#x2019;t doing so well. The numbers released for Fall 2010 show consistent declines, and the fact that they haven&amp;#x2019;t released more positive numbers for 2011 suggests things haven&amp;#x2019;t gotten better.\n\nGlamour is often described as the most lucrative title within Cond&amp;#xE9; Nast with 1.85 million subscribers and average newsstand sales of 453,707\n\nPotentially the numbers for the new Apple Newsstand will be better, but we&amp;#x2019;ll have to see.\n\n[twitter]All the numbers about Conde Nast&apos;s iPad issue sales, from Adweek: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/breaking-down-cond-nasts-e-sales-133807[/twitter]\n

Compared with print editions that sell hundreds of thousands of copies every month, the Conde Nast iPad apps aren&amp;#x2019;t doing so well. The numbers released for Fall 2010 show consistent declines, and the fact that they haven&amp;#x2019;t released more positive numbers for 2011 suggests things haven&amp;#x2019;t gotten better.\n\nGlamour is often described as the most lucrative title within Cond&amp;#xE9; Nast with 1.85 million subscribers and average newsstand sales of 453,707\n\nPotentially the numbers for the new Apple Newsstand will be better, but we&amp;#x2019;ll have to see.\n\n[twitter]All the numbers about Conde Nast&apos;s iPad issue sales, from Adweek: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/breaking-down-cond-nasts-e-sales-133807[/twitter]\n

Compared with print editions that sell hundreds of thousands of copies every month, the Conde Nast iPad apps aren&amp;#x2019;t doing so well. The numbers released for Fall 2010 show consistent declines, and the fact that they haven&amp;#x2019;t released more positive numbers for 2011 suggests things haven&amp;#x2019;t gotten better.\n\nGlamour is often described as the most lucrative title within Cond&amp;#xE9; Nast with 1.85 million subscribers and average newsstand sales of 453,707\n\nPotentially the numbers for the new Apple Newsstand will be better, but we&amp;#x2019;ll have to see.\n\n[twitter]All the numbers about Conde Nast&apos;s iPad issue sales, from Adweek: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/breaking-down-cond-nasts-e-sales-133807[/twitter]\n

Compared with print editions that sell hundreds of thousands of copies every month, the Conde Nast iPad apps aren&amp;#x2019;t doing so well. The numbers released for Fall 2010 show consistent declines, and the fact that they haven&amp;#x2019;t released more positive numbers for 2011 suggests things haven&amp;#x2019;t gotten better.\n\nGlamour is often described as the most lucrative title within Cond&amp;#xE9; Nast with 1.85 million subscribers and average newsstand sales of 453,707\n\nPotentially the numbers for the new Apple Newsstand will be better, but we&amp;#x2019;ll have to see.\n\n[twitter]All the numbers about Conde Nast&apos;s iPad issue sales, from Adweek: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/breaking-down-cond-nasts-e-sales-133807[/twitter]\n

Compared with print editions that sell hundreds of thousands of copies every month, the Conde Nast iPad apps aren&amp;#x2019;t doing so well. The numbers released for Fall 2010 show consistent declines, and the fact that they haven&amp;#x2019;t released more positive numbers for 2011 suggests things haven&amp;#x2019;t gotten better.\n\nGlamour is often described as the most lucrative title within Cond&amp;#xE9; Nast with 1.85 million subscribers and average newsstand sales of 453,707\n\nPotentially the numbers for the new Apple Newsstand will be better, but we&amp;#x2019;ll have to see.\n\n[twitter]All the numbers about Conde Nast&apos;s iPad issue sales, from Adweek: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/breaking-down-cond-nasts-e-sales-133807[/twitter]\n

Compared with print editions that sell hundreds of thousands of copies every month, the Conde Nast iPad apps aren&amp;#x2019;t doing so well. The numbers released for Fall 2010 show consistent declines, and the fact that they haven&amp;#x2019;t released more positive numbers for 2011 suggests things haven&amp;#x2019;t gotten better.\n\nGlamour is often described as the most lucrative title within Cond&amp;#xE9; Nast with 1.85 million subscribers and average newsstand sales of 453,707\n\nPotentially the numbers for the new Apple Newsstand will be better, but we&amp;#x2019;ll have to see.\n\n[twitter]All the numbers about Conde Nast&apos;s iPad issue sales, from Adweek: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/breaking-down-cond-nasts-e-sales-133807[/twitter]\n

NPR, on the other hand, has seen a dramatic increase in the number of pages that get viewed, which presumably means a lot more people are engaging with it. In fact, they&amp;#x2019;ve seen their page views go up 80%.\n\n[twitter]Lots of stats about the success of NPR&amp;#x2019;s API in this presentation at the Wolfram Data Summit: http://www.slideshare.net/danieljacobson/npr-presentation-at-wolfram-data-summit-2010[/twitter]\n

The reason their page views have gone up 80%? They attribute it directly to their API. But more important, they&amp;#x2019;re saving time and money because they don&amp;#x2019;t have to do custom development so every new platform can access the content, which means that the time to design and launch each new app is much lower.\n\nI don&amp;#x2019;t tell you this story because I&amp;#x2019;m here touting APIs. In fact, I&amp;#x2019;m really afraid that someone is going to come up to me after this talk and ask for advice on implementing an API, and my response is going to be &amp;#x201C;I like cake.&amp;#x201D; There are other people here who are way smarter about actually doing this than I am.\n

I&amp;#x2019;m talking about this because understanding how structured content will give us more flexibility in the future is the key to understanding how we&amp;#x2019;re going to deal with this crazy multi-device landscape.\n\nNot because art direction and interaction design aren&amp;#x2019;t important. Because they ARE important.\n

[twitter]Conde Nast is seeking a cost-effective publishing model for a growing number of devices: http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-conde-nast-aims-to-unify-tablet-and-mobile-magazine-production/[/twitter]\n

[twitter]Conde Nast is seeking a cost-effective publishing model for a growing number of devices: http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-conde-nast-aims-to-unify-tablet-and-mobile-magazine-production/[/twitter]\n

[twitter]Conde Nast is seeking a cost-effective publishing model for a growing number of devices: http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-conde-nast-aims-to-unify-tablet-and-mobile-magazine-production/[/twitter]\n

[twitter]Conde Nast is seeking a cost-effective publishing model for a growing number of devices: http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-conde-nast-aims-to-unify-tablet-and-mobile-magazine-production/[/twitter]\n

[twitter]Conde Nast is seeking a cost-effective publishing model for a growing number of devices: http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-conde-nast-aims-to-unify-tablet-and-mobile-magazine-production/[/twitter]\n

[twitter]Conde Nast is seeking a cost-effective publishing model for a growing number of devices: http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-conde-nast-aims-to-unify-tablet-and-mobile-magazine-production/[/twitter]\n

[twitter]Conde Nast is seeking a cost-effective publishing model for a growing number of devices: http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-conde-nast-aims-to-unify-tablet-and-mobile-magazine-production/[/twitter]\n

So, what is it going to take to make this happen? And what will the future look like?\n

The future is old. People, particularly in the tech comm community have been talking about structured content for years.\n\n[twitter]Ann Rockley is a passionate advocate for structured content, what she calls &amp;#x201C;Intelligent Content.&amp;#x201D; Go buy her new book:&amp;#xA0;http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Enterprise-Content-Unified-Strategy/dp/032181536X/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1[/twitter]\n

Whatever you call it, what it means is that we have a flexible, structured base of content that can be used to publish out to whatever channel you need to: web, mobile, tablets, even intranets. Even print.\n\n[twitter]We should be platform-agnostic for content, platform-aware for user experience, says @stephenhay. http://www.slideshare.net/stephenhay/structured-content-first[/twitter]\n

What I like to call a &amp;#x201C;reusable content store.&amp;#x201D;\n\n[twitter]We&amp;#x2019;re moving toward a web that&amp;#x2019;s more fluid, less fixed, and on a multitude of devices, says @sara_ann_marie: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/future-ready-content/[/twitter]\n\n

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Why is it NPR that is innovating on developing an API? Why is it the Boston Globe that can launch an innovative responsive design site? Is it a coincidence that it&amp;#x2019;s news organizations, and not other types of publishers?\n

News organizations already have structured content. They have existing frameworks for thinking about how to write in chunks that pre-date the web. They even have their own names for these chunks: hed, dek, lede, nut graf. They have people who already think this way, they are taught to do this, they know how to write like this.\n\n\n

News organizations already have structured content. They have existing frameworks for thinking about how to write in chunks that pre-date the web. They even have their own names for these chunks: hed, dek, lede, nut graf. They have people who already think this way, they are taught to do this, they know how to write like this.\n\n\n

News organizations already have structured content. They have existing frameworks for thinking about how to write in chunks that pre-date the web. They even have their own names for these chunks: hed, dek, lede, nut graf. They have people who already think this way, they are taught to do this, they know how to write like this.\n\n\n

News organizations already have structured content. They have existing frameworks for thinking about how to write in chunks that pre-date the web. They even have their own names for these chunks: hed, dek, lede, nut graf. They have people who already think this way, they are taught to do this, they know how to write like this.\n\n\n

News organizations already have structured content. They have existing frameworks for thinking about how to write in chunks that pre-date the web. They even have their own names for these chunks: hed, dek, lede, nut graf. They have people who already think this way, they are taught to do this, they know how to write like this.\n\n\n

News organizations already have structured content. They have existing frameworks for thinking about how to write in chunks that pre-date the web. They even have their own names for these chunks: hed, dek, lede, nut graf. They have people who already think this way, they are taught to do this, they know how to write like this.\n\n\n

For most companies, figuring out how to structure their content is freakishly hard. It&amp;#x2019;s scary. \nIt&amp;#x2019;s painful to think about what it means to dismember your beautifully integrated package into little content chunks.\nBut if we&amp;#x2019;re going to survive in the future, we have to do it. It will take imagination and insight and courage.\n\nSo I had a dinner, I had dinner with some representatives from a major magazine publisher a couple weeks ago.&amp;#xA0; And over the course of our conversation we talked about their organizational challenges, you know, the difficulty that they have in explaining how digital works to their existing staffers, the challenges that they face in their internal org structure, their internal workflows, their internal processes.&amp;#xA0;And listening to them talk it was like a lightbulb went off over my head, like it hit me so hard.&amp;#xA0; It wasn&apos;t that I hadn&apos;t thought of this before, but it was like it really drove home the problem, which is that they are still thinking about writing for print.&amp;#xA0; Their whole organization, everything about it is figuring out how they can write for print, and then take that print content and shove it onto a webpage, and then figuring out how they can take that content and shove it into a mobile device.&amp;#xA0;Everything that they&apos;re thinking about, all of their processes, all of their goals, all of their values are still print, print, print, print, print.&amp;#xA0; Their entire mindset, their entire value system, their entire workflow, their entire culture is all still organized around print. &amp;#xA0;\n

They are still thinking about writing for print, and then trying to figure out how to take &amp;#x201C;print&amp;#x201D; content and get it onto other devices. Their entire mindset, values system, workflow, and culture all are rooted in the notion that what matters is writing for print.\n\n[twitter]Print, the only mode of content delivery for so long, has become the mode of content creation as well. http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2010/05/24/when-did-print-become-an-input/[/twitter]\n

The NY Times, when they launched their new Sunday Review section recently, figured out what they wanted to do for the print edition, and then got te digital team involved late in the game, to figure out how to put it online.\n\n\n

And it&amp;#x2019;s easy to be judgmental about these dinosaurs, right? I mean, everyone can look 5 or 10 years out and know that print isn&amp;#x2019;t going to win this one. And so it&amp;#x2019;s easy to feel superior, like we in the digital side wouldn&amp;#x2019;t fall into the same trap. Right? RIGHT?\n\n\n

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Well of course we are! We moved from letting content creators think about where something would live in a book or a document to letting them think about where it would live on a webpage. And, as Lisa Welchman says, thinking about where something &amp;#x201C;lives&amp;#x201D; on a &amp;#x201C;web page&amp;#x201D; is pretty 1999.\n\n

So, when I talk about adaptive content, a reusable content store, I don&amp;#x2019;t mean that we start with print content and then push it out to other platforms.\n\n

But I ALSO don&amp;#x2019;t mean we start with web pages and then figure out how to reformat them for different screens.\n

And no, I don&amp;#x2019;t even mean we start with mobile first and then figure out how to progressively enhance our content.\n\n

When we say start with content first, what we mean is start with content. Clean, well structured, flexible content that can be used across a variety of channels and platforms and contexts, because it was planned that way from the start. Because it wasn&amp;#x2019;t created with any one channel in mind.\n\n[twitter]Embrace the unpredictable, fluid, fragile nature of the web, and design from the content out, says @markboulton: http://www.netmagazine.com/interviews/mark-boulton-designing-websites-using-content-out[/twitter]\n

Now to do that, we have to deal with a vexing problem, which is the tight coupling of content with form.\nWeb standards has made great strides in trying to separate content from form, but we have to get to the root of the problem, which is that we have \nVertically integrated CMS\nCombines content management with content publishing\nThat&amp;#x2019;s the reason people need an API\n

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[twitter]The better solution is to structure content only once, but in a way that it can be used anywhere, says @uxcrank. http://dswillis.com/uxcrank/?p=378[/twitter]\n

So, what has to change to make this happen? 3 things.\n

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This is the outline for the next section\nWhat do I mean by writing for the chunk?\n

This is the outline for the next section\nWhat do I mean by writing for the chunk?\n

This is the outline for the next section\nWhat do I mean by writing for the chunk?\n

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Now, Amazon actually has structured content! They have their stuff broken into fields. \nBut, the problem is that it isn&amp;#x2019;t written for reuse, it&amp;#x2019;s written for a web page and then crammed onto a mobile device.\nBulleted list\n73 words on this screen, and 23 of them are repeating the product title. 5 of them are &amp;#x201C;make memories and share joy.&amp;#x201D; I need you to sell me a camera, not on the benefits of photography.\nOh, look, the product name. Again.\nEven these headings, which are okay in the context of a web page, start to seem meaningless when used as navigation. What&amp;#x2019;s the difference between all these things.\nWant to be clear about this: This is Amazon&amp;#x2019;s PRODUCT PAGE.\nThis is one of the most intensely designed and tested pages on the internet.\nAnd on mobile, it&amp;#x2019;s like we just asked the robots to shovel in text without thinking about it.\n

Now, Amazon actually has structured content! They have their stuff broken into fields. \nBut, the problem is that it isn&amp;#x2019;t written for reuse, it&amp;#x2019;s written for a web page and then crammed onto a mobile device.\nBulleted list\n73 words on this screen, and 23 of them are repeating the product title. 5 of them are &amp;#x201C;make memories and share joy.&amp;#x201D; I need you to sell me a camera, not on the benefits of photography.\nOh, look, the product name. Again.\nEven these headings, which are okay in the context of a web page, start to seem meaningless when used as navigation. What&amp;#x2019;s the difference between all these things.\nWant to be clear about this: This is Amazon&amp;#x2019;s PRODUCT PAGE.\nThis is one of the most intensely designed and tested pages on the internet.\nAnd on mobile, it&amp;#x2019;s like we just asked the robots to shovel in text without thinking about it.\n

Now, Amazon actually has structured content! They have their stuff broken into fields. \nBut, the problem is that it isn&amp;#x2019;t written for reuse, it&amp;#x2019;s written for a web page and then crammed onto a mobile device.\nBulleted list\n73 words on this screen, and 23 of them are repeating the product title. 5 of them are &amp;#x201C;make memories and share joy.&amp;#x201D; I need you to sell me a camera, not on the benefits of photography.\nOh, look, the product name. Again.\nEven these headings, which are okay in the context of a web page, start to seem meaningless when used as navigation. What&amp;#x2019;s the difference between all these things.\nWant to be clear about this: This is Amazon&amp;#x2019;s PRODUCT PAGE.\nThis is one of the most intensely designed and tested pages on the internet.\nAnd on mobile, it&amp;#x2019;s like we just asked the robots to shovel in text without thinking about it.\n

Now, Amazon actually has structured content! They have their stuff broken into fields. \nBut, the problem is that it isn&amp;#x2019;t written for reuse, it&amp;#x2019;s written for a web page and then crammed onto a mobile device.\nBulleted list\n73 words on this screen, and 23 of them are repeating the product title. 5 of them are &amp;#x201C;make memories and share joy.&amp;#x201D; I need you to sell me a camera, not on the benefits of photography.\nOh, look, the product name. Again.\nEven these headings, which are okay in the context of a web page, start to seem meaningless when used as navigation. What&amp;#x2019;s the difference between all these things.\nWant to be clear about this: This is Amazon&amp;#x2019;s PRODUCT PAGE.\nThis is one of the most intensely designed and tested pages on the internet.\nAnd on mobile, it&amp;#x2019;s like we just asked the robots to shovel in text without thinking about it.\n

Now, Amazon actually has structured content! They have their stuff broken into fields. \nBut, the problem is that it isn&amp;#x2019;t written for reuse, it&amp;#x2019;s written for a web page and then crammed onto a mobile device.\nBulleted list\n73 words on this screen, and 23 of them are repeating the product title. 5 of them are &amp;#x201C;make memories and share joy.&amp;#x201D; I need you to sell me a camera, not on the benefits of photography.\nOh, look, the product name. Again.\nEven these headings, which are okay in the context of a web page, start to seem meaningless when used as navigation. What&amp;#x2019;s the difference between all these things.\nWant to be clear about this: This is Amazon&amp;#x2019;s PRODUCT PAGE.\nThis is one of the most intensely designed and tested pages on the internet.\nAnd on mobile, it&amp;#x2019;s like we just asked the robots to shovel in text without thinking about it.\n

Now, Amazon actually has structured content! They have their stuff broken into fields. \nBut, the problem is that it isn&amp;#x2019;t written for reuse, it&amp;#x2019;s written for a web page and then crammed onto a mobile device.\nBulleted list\n73 words on this screen, and 23 of them are repeating the product title. 5 of them are &amp;#x201C;make memories and share joy.&amp;#x201D; I need you to sell me a camera, not on the benefits of photography.\nOh, look, the product name. Again.\nEven these headings, which are okay in the context of a web page, start to seem meaningless when used as navigation. What&amp;#x2019;s the difference between all these things.\nWant to be clear about this: This is Amazon&amp;#x2019;s PRODUCT PAGE.\nThis is one of the most intensely designed and tested pages on the internet.\nAnd on mobile, it&amp;#x2019;s like we just asked the robots to shovel in text without thinking about it.\n

Now, Amazon actually has structured content! They have their stuff broken into fields. \nBut, the problem is that it isn&amp;#x2019;t written for reuse, it&amp;#x2019;s written for a web page and then crammed onto a mobile device.\nBulleted list\n73 words on this screen, and 23 of them are repeating the product title. 5 of them are &amp;#x201C;make memories and share joy.&amp;#x201D; I need you to sell me a camera, not on the benefits of photography.\nOh, look, the product name. Again.\nEven these headings, which are okay in the context of a web page, start to seem meaningless when used as navigation. What&amp;#x2019;s the difference between all these things.\nWant to be clear about this: This is Amazon&amp;#x2019;s PRODUCT PAGE.\nThis is one of the most intensely designed and tested pages on the internet.\nAnd on mobile, it&amp;#x2019;s like we just asked the robots to shovel in text without thinking about it.\n

Now, Amazon actually has structured content! They have their stuff broken into fields. \nBut, the problem is that it isn&amp;#x2019;t written for reuse, it&amp;#x2019;s written for a web page and then crammed onto a mobile device.\nBulleted list\n73 words on this screen, and 23 of them are repeating the product title. 5 of them are &amp;#x201C;make memories and share joy.&amp;#x201D; I need you to sell me a camera, not on the benefits of photography.\nOh, look, the product name. Again.\nEven these headings, which are okay in the context of a web page, start to seem meaningless when used as navigation. What&amp;#x2019;s the difference between all these things.\nWant to be clear about this: This is Amazon&amp;#x2019;s PRODUCT PAGE.\nThis is one of the most intensely designed and tested pages on the internet.\nAnd on mobile, it&amp;#x2019;s like we just asked the robots to shovel in text without thinking about it.\n

The idea that we can just show the first few lines of what we put on a desktop site is foolish. We have to get people writing for reuse and creating smaller content elements.\n

The problem is we have CMSes that permit &amp;#x2014; encourage &amp;#x2014; creating undifferentiated blobs of content. \nWe let people get away with having a &amp;#x201C;Microsoft Word-like&amp;#x201D; interface&amp;#x201D; with a WSIWYG toolbar. \nThis prevents people from creating content structures and couples content with form. \nA page created with a CMS like this will look exactly the way you want it to... in the context you created it for.\n\n[twitter]Your WYSIWYG editor does indeed suck. @rachelandrew tells it like it is: http://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2011/07/27/your-wysiwyg-editor-sucks/[/twitter]\n

To me, this is the war between blobs of undifferentiated content, and chunks of well structured content.Support the chunks! Don&amp;#x2019;t let the blobs win!\n

Structured content is made possible by a CMS that is set up to guide content creators through developing different sizes and formats for content, and that presumably people like using\n

One thorny problem is that for initial content creation, we often have an offline step.\nThis is an example taken from Erin Kissane&amp;#x2019;s ALA article on content templates, which are used to help gather content from people in a business. \nEven if we&amp;#x2019;re doing a great job in soliciting well structured content, it&amp;#x2019;s not always the case that these fields make it into the CMS. The CMS might take all this hard work of chunking and store it as a blob.\n\n[twitter]Content templates can help improve consistency across the website, says @kissane: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/content-templates-to-the-rescue/[/twitter]\n

TRANSITION:\nThings have changed, but the more they change, the more they stay the same.\nContent strategy reminds me of nothing so much as the early days of IA\nHelpful to remember a couple of things that we did right, things that are happening right now with CS.\n

When I talk about metadata, I mean it in the broadest possible sense. \nSecond thing we have to do is make metadata seem sexy. Okay, if not sexy, then at least not so scary.\nExplain to people why they need to add extra fields to their content, or extra markup for semantic tags.\n

Get people to wrap their heads around how to use metadata and business rules to build pages dynamically\nWhen people go from custom crafting a landing page\nTo being told that now, the landing page will build itself\nIt&amp;#x2019;s confusing, hard to wrap your heads around\n

The best summation of this concept comes from a guy named Ethan Resnick, who explained &amp;#x201C;Metadata is the new art direction.&amp;#x201D; \n\nWhat this means is that the art of constructing pages or sites or apps is now not just about making custom designed layouts. It&amp;#x2019;s about figuring out how to to use logic, business rules, search queries and metadata to build dynamically generated pages. \n\n[twitter]Use structured content and rule-based art direction for multi-platform styling, says @studip101: http://www.mymorguefile.com/blog/ruleBasedArtDirection.html[/twitter]\n

One of the challenges that we have in thinking about different devices and platforms\nMaking good decisions about how to prioritize information: what&amp;#x2019;s important, and what&amp;#x2019;s not?\nHow to handle the juxtaposition of content on different screens\nWith editorially generated metadata, we can get some insights about importance\n

Guardian has dynamically generated topic pages\nMartin Belam said that one problem they had was that the main story couldn&amp;#x2019;t just be the most recent\nYou&amp;#x2019;d wind up with random stuff there\nSo they had to start creating editorial priorities, and now the top story is selected via an algorithm that looks at both importance and recency\n

We&amp;#x2019;ve been talking a lot about how structured content can support different device contexts\nWhat&amp;#x2019;s really exciting is that if we learn how to write more structured content, create more flexible content chunks\nThen we can actually deliver on the promise of personalization\nWe&amp;#x2019;ve been talking about that forever, when I first heard about it my immediate thought was &amp;#x201C;well who&amp;#x2019;s going to write all that text?&amp;#x201D;\nAdvertising is way ahead of us on this, we can do better.\n

If we&amp;#x2019;re going to deliver on this promise, we need better CMS interfaces.\nThe future of mobile, the future of personalization, the future of content\nAll runs through the future of better content management.\n\nMost of my best insights about where this field needs to go come from me looking back on times in my career where I&amp;#x2019;ve screwed up. In this case, I&amp;#x2019;m working for a major magazine conglomerate on a number of projects, including redesigns of many of their properties, and putting in a new CMS. I was leading the UX team for the engagement, and I would sit in all these executive presentations in the fancy conference room. The executives would sit over here, and I&amp;#x2019;d outline my vision for the new user experience, and the projector screen was over here, and we&amp;#x2019;d show them what that would look like. \n

Creating structured content means having a bunch of fields for chunks and metadata in the interface.\nPeople bitch about this. They hate it. They beg for a blob and a WYSIWYG toolbar.\nThe solution isn&amp;#x2019;t to give in and make it more like Microsoft Word.The solution is to fix the CMS workflow problems.\n[twitter]Baby got backend: content administrators are users too! My talk with @eaton about improving the author experience. http://www.archive.org/details/drupalconchi_day2_baby_got_backend[/twitter]\n

UX would never be content to deliver software, even enterprise software, that wasn&amp;#x2019;t designed around the user.\nWell, for a CMS, the user is the content creator, and we need to do better.\n\nBecause, see, if you are in the business of creating content &amp;#x2014; and these days, who isn&amp;#x2019;t? &amp;#x2014; then the efficiency of your content workflow directly contributes to value for your business. \n

Do you know anyone who&amp;#x2019;s looking at analytics data on the performance of their CMS? I don&amp;#x2019;t.\nIf you were running an ecommerce site, you would optimize the hell out of those workflows. Delays, dropoffs, timeouts, errors: all result in lost revenue.\nIf you&apos;re a content-focused business, your content workflow is like an ecommerce workflow. And we have to start doing a better job of designing CMS interfaces for the people who use them.\n\n

This means we need to evaluate potential CMSes based on more than technical architecture, feature checklists, more than just the system requirements, security requirements and support requirements.\n

We have to stop talking about &amp;#x201C;usability&amp;#x201D; in CMSes as being about having a WYSIWYG toolbar, cute interface widgets, or an attractive font and color palette. Those things are nice, but true usability comes from understanding the complexity of the workflow: how the content is structured, what metadata is in place, and how pages get built dynamically based off business rules.\n

We have all kinds of tools in our UX toolkit that we can put to work on designing better content management interfaces and workflows.\n

I&amp;#x2019;m not saying we need to do this just because I care about the people who create content &amp;#x2014; though I do, I want them to be happy.\n

I&amp;#x2019;m saying this because if you give people better tools to use, if you remove the pain points from their daily workflow, they will do better work. They will create more and better content. And that means value to the business.\n\n[twitter]CMS requires continual investment, development. No matter how small or large your org is, your CMS has to evolve. http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/digital-strategies/134791/4-ways-content-management-systems-are-evolving-why-it-matters-to-journalists/[/twitter]\n

Not constraining, freeing.\nFreed up to appear on a variety of devices.\nYOU as designers will be freer to make good design decisions that are the right ones for the platform\nBecause you won&amp;#x2019;t be repurposing a design from print, or a design from the web\nYou&amp;#x2019;ll be working off of a content base and then making the right design decisions.\n

You want this. I want this. We need this.\n

Get the formatting out of the CMS. Better designed CMS interfaces and workflows will make it possible for us to have clean, well-chunked content, not blobs of text with formatting mixed in. \n\nThe future of design that supports different platforms is better CMS.\n\n[twitter]Web content management is for losers: http://jonontech.com/2009/12/16/visions-of-jon-wcm-is-for-losers/[/twitter]\n

Ongoing conversations about how to structure content and what that means for design. \nHow do semantic tags relate to styles? To different interactions? How do you art direct with metadata?\n[twitter]Start with the structure, not the words, to design for fluidity, says @markboulton: http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/structure-first-content-always[/twitter]\n

I know there&amp;#x2019;s sometimes the sense that content is somebody else&amp;#x2019;s problem.\nThat the CMS is a black box that you&amp;#x2019;d rather not look inside.\nWhat I hope you can see is that we all need to care about this,\nbecause if our designs are going to adapt across different platforms, our content has to too.\n

[twitter]Want more from me on the subject of adaptive content? Check out my roundup of links, interviews and presentations: http://karenmcgrane.com/2011/12/14/mobile-content-strategy/[/twitter]\n

“You can’t afford to create
a piece ofcontent for any one platform.Instead of crafting a website, youhave to put more effort into craftingthe description of the different bitsof an asset, so they can be reusedmore effectively, so they can delivermore value. —Nic Newman, BBC

“Existing art and production staffersfrom
the print side would beresponsible for making two iPadlayouts (one in portrait and one inlandscape) on Adobe’s platform. —Condé Nast Is Experiencing Technical Difficulties

All I see is an
entire organization screaming,“WE WANT IT TO BE THE EIGHTIES GODDAMMIT.” Condé Nast Is Experiencing Technical Difficulties

“Over the last year, NPR’s
total pageview growth has increased by morethan 80%.How did we get that much growth?Our API. —Zach Brand, Senior Director Technology, NPR

“The biggest impact that the
API has made,however, is with our mobile strategy. TheAPI has enabled NPR product owners tobuild specialized apps on a wide range ofplatforms and devices, liberating themfrom being dependent on customdevelopment to access the content.Through this process, we built our iPhoneand iPad apps, mobile sites, Android appand HTML5 site, some of which wereturned around in a matter of weeks!

Our goalis building a once
isall together to haveBringing it to publish intoInstead ofOur aimultimate and a workflow to flexibility anda cohesive workflow hasproductand distributetake a piece everywhere.we’rea realto trying forbeen able challenge tosupport, we’reof content and put —on 15us. It’s been tough itflip that to build adifferent lot moreand stillthere’s a screens work.toworkflow and a systemhave a very consistent looksupport these multipleand feel.design outputs:Adaptive Content.

“A semantic content publishingsystem creates
well-defined chunksof content that can be combined inwhatever way is most appropriatefor a particular platform.All display issues are addressed bydelivery applications, rather than bya content management systemearlier in the process.

Page Title Example: Widget-o-Rama: FancyWidget
No. 5PRODUCT DESCRIPTION—ANSWERS THE QUESTION “WHAT IS IT?”Product NameProduct LineShort Guidelines: Two sentences. The product description should answer the questionsDescription “What is it?” “Who is it for?” and “What does it do?” The description must include at least one real, actual noun besides the name of the Example description: Widget-o-Rama’s FancyWidget product. No. 5 is an inverse reactive current supply mechanism used for operating nofer-trunnions and reducing sinusoidal depleneration when used in conjunction with a drawn reciprocating dingle arm.PRODUCT BENEFITS—ANSWERS THE QUESTION “WHY SHOULD I BUY IT?”Beneﬁt/Feature Guidelines: Benefits are about the customerPairs and answer the question, “What will this do for me?” Features are about the product and answer the question, “How does the product work?” On the Widget-o-Rama website, they should come in pairs consisting of a very Examples: specific benefit, followed by the feature or Reduces maintenance costs by up to 50% by features that make it possible. Use concrete replacing delicate gremlin studs with a robust spiral terms whenever you can. decommutator and eliminating the need for drammock oil after phase detractors are remissed. Prevents side fumbling via the addition of pentametric fan consisting of six hydrocoptic marzelvanes fitted to the ambifacient lunar vaneshaft.